Have you watched the Perennial Plate? This duo publishes amazing short videos about food producers from around the world, and they have won a few awards from the prestigious James Beard Foundation. Here is one of my favorite videos, "10 Things We Love about Italy." Careful - you will definitely get hungry after you watch this video... Guess what they feature? You only get one guess.... yup that's right! But they aren't talking about that $2 Safeway's stuff which is full of caramels and wine vinegar... They are talking about the real deal, like what you get here at La Resdora. Made from 100% mosto cotto (cooked grapes) and aged in wooden barrels for years, carefully monitored by a Master...

Winter is coming... in Modena. Modena winters are super cold; the average lows for December are 34 degrees, and January continues to get colder, and its an important time in the maturation and aging process of balsamic vinegars. After the flurry of activity of the fall - the harvest, the cooking of grape must, and the changing of the barrels, now is a quiet time for the vinegar to begin to sit and settle in for the rest of the year as a new cycle of aging, maturation, and fermentation begins. The smells in the attic are mellowing out as the cold chills the vinegar. The vinegar begin to soak in the new flavors of this new barrel and new environment. There is something...

As the days get colder, my stomach growls for something heartier for dinner. Something creamy, cheesy, and with a little umami. I was lucky enough to find some beautiful Chanterelle mushrooms at Berkeley Bowl, (despite the season really ending towards November), with bits of hay and leaves still sticking to the gills, and thought of making a mushroom tart. The crust recipe is from Lulu's Provencal Table, which is an amazing recipe book from Richard Olney, who was a big influence for Alice Waters. He was one of the first Americans to create a home for himself in France in the 70s, and begin cooking simple French food and published this book. Crust recipe for a 9" tart: Ingredients 1 cup...